POEM: Clearer in Haiku

I once knew someone who,

when asked for better clarity

on some instructions they had given,

which hadn’t been understood,

chose to respond in the form of a poem.

The poem didn’t work.

It was not best suited for clarity.

The person who received it missed the memorial service in the end.

They couldn’t find the venue,

despite the perfect rhymes.

I sometimes wonder if that is the problem with social media?

That we are using it,

too often,

to attempt to have conversations,

in a format which makes such conversations

impossible to have?

A medium unfit for purpose?

Like a heckler at a comedy club,

Trying to share the meaning of life,

To ears disinterested and eyes focused on someone else’s spotlight.

Right sentiment, wrong stage.

Somebody show them the door.

Comedy’s all about the timing

And this ain’t the time.

Or the place.

This is not a conversation,

This is self-harm as team sport.

Not every chrysalis leads to transformation.

(Although we can waste a lot of time

waiting for change in the dark)

A void that yells back remains,

nevertheless,

a void.

When I asked my poet friend why he’d opted for his strategy,

even though it demonstrably failed,

he told me he just liked writing poems.

When I said I didn’t understand

He said it might be clearer in haiku.

POEM: A Lesson Learnt

My mother was weeping,

again,

when she told me teaching was like

spending hours in the kitchen,

preparing a careful feast,

with love,

for a table of ungrateful eaters

who scoff the meal down,

without thanks,

and leave you to wash up the dishes,

alone.

So many weekends and evenings lost

for children who couldn’t care less

about classroom activities

which took hours to prepare,

and only seconds to destroy,

with a single roll of teenage eyes,

or a loud, exaggerated, yawn.

Leaving cruel laughter instead of wonder

and replacing wisdom with empty snark.

When she got her diagnosis

it was one of the first things that she did:

filling a skip with all those folders and box-files.

Shutting the door on disappointment.

Her legacy of recipes,

cooked only to leave her cold.

No longer needed

now that time was too precious to waste.

When I started my own journey,

and began the same hopeful sacrifice

of evenings and weekends,

to cook nourishing meals

for mouths that refused to open,

or that swallowed glumly,

without thanks,

I felt my mother’s presence

as I slaved over that same hot stove.

The one she had warned me not to touch.

I wish she were here still to tell

how at least one of her offered lessons -

one more meal she cooked with love -

did not go unappreciated

(although it seemed so on the surface,

when I told her I knew better).

That it nourishes even now.

And I can smile with every eye-roll,

similar to my own,

and feel ok,

despite my disappointment,

after every wasted night,

because I,

unlike her,

do not cook in my kitchen alone.

No appetite for a meal served at the time;

we might creep back for leftovers,

later,

under cover of darkness.

Illuminated only by the light of a fridge,

which comes on only when we choose to pull it open.

Or,

the meal taken when given,

but gobbled

too fast to taste,

without pleasure or savouring,

might be thought of only later,

when the gnawing ache that yearns for more,

discovers it cannot feed itself.

Pearls thrown before swine,

(as she once threw them before me)

glitter still in their abandonment.

To be noticed and picked up again,

later,

by any pig who finally notices.

And in their tenacity they remind me,

that she wasn’t always wrong.